Acts 21:38

Art not thou then the Egyptian, who before these days stirred up to sedition and led out into the wilderness the four thousand men of the Assassins?

Egyptian who led ... four thousand men ... Commentators like to speculate on the disparity between this chiliarch's attribution of only 4,000 men to the Egyptian seditionist as contrasted with the 30,000 attributed to him by Josephus; but it is exceedingly unlikely that the chiliarch's information would have been inadequate on such a subject. Josephus, unlike the sacred authors, has been proved wrong on many points.

The evil genius of the critical mind, however, is revealed in such a comment as that of MacGreggor, thus: "This is another faulty recollection of Josephus on Luke's part."[35] This snide little criticism is reproduced here, not because of its value, for it has none; but it is cited as another example of the crooked exegesis which is popular in our day. Here is what Josephus wrote:

There was an Egyptian false prophet ... who got together thirty thousand men who were deluded by him ... and was ready to break into Jerusalem by force ... conquer the Roman garrison ... But Felix prevented his attempt ... When it came to a battle, the Egyptian ran away ... while the greatest part of those that were with him were either destroyed or taken alive.[36]

Note the last lines of the above comment from Josephus, which declare that there were more than FIFTEEN THOUSAND casualties, that number being the minimum which could qualify as "the greatest part" of "thirty thousand." But in another place, Josephus gave the number killed and captured thus:

Felix attacked the Egyptian and the people that were with him. He slew four hundred of them, and took two hundred alive. But the Egyptian himself escaped out of the fight, but did not appear any more.[37]

Behold then the accuracy of Josephus! But not less marvelous is the critical mind which can: (1) suppose that Josephus was absolutely correct, (2) that the competent military commander in Rome knew that Josephus was correct and agreed with him when he said the Egyptian led thirty thousand men, and (3) that poor Luke failed to remember exactly what he had read in Josephus, (4) that of course he never heard Lysias say anything, but was piecing together a speech attributed to Paul by scrounging up some material from Josephus! It is exactly this type of nonsense which has firmly fixed the onus of bias and unreliability upon current criticism of the New Testament.

[35] G. H. C. MacGreggor, The Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1954), p. 288.

[36] Flavius Josephus, op. cit., p. 683.

[37] Ibid., p. 596.